


Repetition Compulsion

by faithinthepoor



Series: Desperate Housewives [22]
Category: Desperate Housewives
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-14
Updated: 2014-07-14
Packaged: 2018-02-08 19:39:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,697
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1953663
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/faithinthepoor/pseuds/faithinthepoor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set during Coming Home</p>
            </blockquote>





	Repetition Compulsion

**Author's Note:**

> Follows [Unseemly](http://archiveofourown.org/works/668467), [The Theory of Everything](http://archiveofourown.org/users/faithinthepoor), [Here There Be Dragons](http://archiveofourown.org/works/673221), [Somnambulist](http://archiveofourown.org/works/673229), [Wishin’ and Hopin’](http://archiveofourown.org/works/673233), [Nosology](http://archiveofourown.org/works/673238), [Boundary Violations](http://archiveofourown.org/works/673240), [Fractals](http://archiveofourown.org/works/673250), [Windmill Tilting](http://archiveofourown.org/works/673255), [Ambitendency](http://archiveofourown.org/works/673262), [Heisenberg Territory](http://archiveofourown.org/works/673272), [The Illusions of Prisms](http://archiveofourown.org/works/673700), [Keratitis Sicca](http://archiveofourown.org/works/682311), [Schrödinger’s Realm](http://archiveofourown.org/works/682327), [Chiaroscuro](http://archiveofourown.org/works/682358), [Altered Trajectories](http://archiveofourown.org/works/682370), [Elegiacs](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1952136), [Tachyphylaxis](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1952244), [Verismo](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1953516), [Forced Perspective](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1953594) and [Lex Talionis](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1953624)

Locking herself in a room while she holds a baby hostage certainly isn’t the finest moment of her life but sadly it is probably not the lowest. As her inept, attention span impaired boss and his super-mother of a wife argue outside the glass she tries to pretend that it is impenetrable to soundwaves but their mindless bickering refuses to be rebuffed by the barrier. She knows she has no right to interfere with their marriage but she created this situation and solving the problem probably does fall under her responsibility. It takes a little creative thinking on her part but it’s not long before she finds the right strings to pull and the puppets act the way she wants them to, the way she had hoped that they would act in the first place. She watches them exit and the adrenaline that was necessary to help tap dance her way out of the quagmire that she caused begins to subside and suddenly the child seems exceedingly heavy in her arms. She places the little girl on the ground and twirls the child’s tiny pigtail around with her fingers. In response large eyes meet hers and while they are likely just trying to communicate a request to be fed or played with, she has the impression that they are all knowing orbs challenging her for using a defenceless infant in her attempt to get a day care centre at work.

She doesn’t know what has happened to her, doesn’t want to think that she was always so manipulative but believing that she has developed a whole new character flaw isn’t something that fills her with joy either. She has been thinking about this a lot lately, it’s hard not to when the outcomes of her attempts to indirectly bend the people around her to her will have been so extreme. Her closet is practically bulging with skeletons and even though they are mostly metaphorical they are still very hard to ignore. Her bungled attempts constantly toy with her mind, they linger on the periphery of her consciousness, looming spectres of fear and doubt and it is starting to seem that the more she tries to shut them out, the more mistakes she makes. No matter what she does she just seems to be making her legacy of errors grow.

What she doesn’t understand is why she needs to engage in covert acts of manipulation at all, in every conceivable way they are completely out of keeping with her nature. They have no face validity, if she had to describe herself she would say that she was forthright and upfront, she knows that others would probably not be so generous in their adjective selection but either way it leads to a character not afraid to speak her mind and not bothered about hiding her true feelings behind social niceties. None of that seems to fit with needing to scheme and connive or developing master plans designed to alter the behaviour of those around her. It’s almost like there is a schism in her personality, she is carrying around her very own Mr Hyde.

She doesn’t want to dwell on what she has done but the consequences are hard to ignore. She may have been able to bury the rat in a dumpster but the complete change in her social circumstances and the impact of the mass culling at her work are harder to ignore. Sometimes she can at least understand why she felt that manipulations were necessary, they were implemented when her attempts to change things by using a more direct approach were unsuccessful or they were a product of things that could never be said, things that by their nature can never be open, things that relate to way she feels or rather the way she shouldn’t feel about Bree Van de Kamp. Having a justification for her actions doesn’t make them more palatable but she knows that what she did was often done in an attempt to protect the people that she cares about or to keep her family together and that may not make her noble but it does help her to sleep at night. 

Nothing that she does lately seems to go as planned, a fact that she is reminded of every single time she leaves for the office. Despite her guilt over the way she re-entered the workforce she can’t deny that it was something that she wanted. She dreamt about it, she fantasised about returning to a realm where she was confident and where her skills would be appreciated. The reality hasn’t exactly lived up to her expectations though, her efforts go unrecognised almost as often as they did when she was stuck at home but this is infinitely more painful. She may have craved to be applauded for acts of housekeeping that others do as a matter of course but she could accept that this wasn’t likely to happen. Failing to receive recognition for her vocational achievements is a whole lot harder to swallow, she knows she has been absent from the workforce and that the transition back would be bumpy but she always believed that it would only be a matter of time until things went back to the way they were and she would be respected and showered with accolades and awards. Her concerns about work may seem overblown but at the back of her mind lingers the knowledge that if Tom was to ever learn that the meddling that sabotaged his promotion and eventually led to his unemployment was driven by her sapphic tendencies, it would spell ruin for both of them and that would be so much easier to deal with if work was able to deliver the satisfaction that it once did.

Her life has become a series of compromises and half measures, nothing complete, nothing fulfilling, there are scattered fragments of happiness but even these come with a price and with the knowledge that they are limited. Nothing is pure, every thing has an undertone of deceit, of betrayal, they may not be the overwhelming facets but they are always there. Her enjoyment has become mathematical; it can be measured in fractions and percentages. Today is a prime example of her formulaic existence – she was in danger of crashing and burning but eventually managed to influence the Ferraras and recover from her tailspin but if she had have gone down in flames it still would have been a good week because a few days ago she had Bree’s arms wrapped around her. She only had a brief amount of time with Bree and it was as precious as it was fleeting but even this wasn’t free of regret. They consumed coffee in near silence, both of them seemed to be wrestling with their consciences, she would later learn that Bree was struggling with the news of George’s suicide and be offended that Bree had waited to inform her with the others. 

When she was leaving she had wanted to let Bree know that she had been hurt but Andrew had just returned and this wasn’t the time to make a scene so she kept her tone light, “I don’t like finding out important things at the same time as everybody else, it makes me think that I’m not special.”

Bree seemed appreciative that she hadn’t said anything more suggestive, “I didn’t want to have to say it twice and I didn’t what your reaction to seem rehearsed,” she looked to Andrew who was carting his luggage up the stairs, “and I didn’t want it to ruin our coffee.”

She was bemused by Bree’s attention to etiquette and although she still had a burning sensation in the pit of her stomach, born of the fact that she was worried that Bree was deliberately trying to exclude her, she had to admit that part of her was pleased that their alone time hadn’t been overpowered by thoughts of George’s demise. She is going to be able to treasure the moment when she stood up from the table as a cherished keepsake. Bree’s arms had encircled her from behind and the red head had glanced out the window before holding her tighter and nuzzling her neck. 

She had groaned and cursed the fact that the others where due to arrive soon. Bree had laughed indulgently and spun her around, placing a brief but brazen kiss on her lips before stepping back and running her hands over Lynette’s dress, “You look beautiful,” she murmured as her hands continued to skim over the dress in the kind of stereotyped movements that are usually associated with autism. 

The memory of this was fresh in her mind as she reached out to Bree to let her know that on some level she appreciated the fact that the information had been withheld but Bree wouldn’t let her touch her, she jumped back and looked up towards the ceiling as though she thought it possible that Andrew could see them. She had attempted to rib Bree, “He is not going to catch anything from us,” but Bree didn’t appear to find this amusing.

“Don’t you have to go to work?”

She had been a little shaken by Bree’s rapid change in demeanour but she had left without protest and allowed herself to get embroiled in the politics that she had accidentally helped create. She is only willing to admit partial responsibility, she may have pushed for the day car centre but at no point did she suggest, of even imagine, that her boss would abduct his own child. In the end things worked out better than she’d planned and as she enters the newly created day care centre and takes hold of Penny she reflects on the steps necessary to make this possible and realises that she would do it all again. She may not be comfortable with the manipulative side of her nature but it gives her moments when she can be at work and watch Penny smile and affords her the opportunity to hear Bree tell her that she is beautiful and no amount of purity would ever make up for that.


End file.
